Wednesday, February 16, 2011

Playing to the Audience

Kid Leopard v Matt Carlton - BGE Live in San Francisco

Today's BG East Arena update features several galleries from the vintage Live at San Francisco collection of matches. In addition to reminding me that I need to get a copy of these live audience matches featuring some of the early lions, it also reminds me that I really like homoerotic wrestling in front of an audience.

A reader recently chatted with me about the concept of gay wrestling in front of an audience. We both agreed that the concept really moves us. I'm not entirely certain what all the moving parts are that multiply the eroticism of homoerotic wrestling with a live audience, but I have to believe it has to do with the shared intimacy of watching arousing, hardbodied athletes playing to a mutual kink.

Reed/DJ v Rouge/Tucker - Naked Kombat - December 23, 2009

Naked Kombat taped three incredibly hot matches in front of an audience before calling that venue quits. Their boys always got hurt when they wrestled in front of a crowd of cheering fans. Did the kombatants experience an extra rush of adrenaline when the boys in the stand roared with delight at each homoerotic hold? Did they find themselves trying a little too hard, pumped a little too much, with a jeering, cheering, hungry audience egging them on like the crowd that inevitably forms around schoolyard scraps? Maybe that's part of the equation of what turns me on, as well. There's an extra dose of adrenaline with an audience watching. There's not only the fantastically intimate relationship hammered out between the wrestlers, but also the relationship between the wrestlers and the audience. Like a threesome, it adds something exotic and extra intense to an already erotically charged moment.

Reed/DJ v Rouge/Tucker - Naked Kombat - December 23, 2009

My recent introduction to the illustrated storybooks Sexfights at the BG Arena captures this ménage à trois sentiment quite nicely. The story of one night in an explicitly gay, live audience, ring wrestling arena, suggests that the wrestling studs fighting to cum out on top experience a synergistic, orgasmic psychic connection with the audience, carried across the sound waves of the audience's shouts of encouragement, instruction or derision. The wrestlers, financially rewarded on a sliding scale based on how hardcore the victory sex gets, find themselves nudged further in brutality and passion as a result of the boys in the chairs, aroused and enthralled at the live, homoerotic, 110% wrestling kink action occurring just a few feet in front of them.

Chuck Tiger Collins v Fallen Angel - BGE Live on Campus

So perhaps a Sexfights at BG Arena scenario might have trouble finding an insurance carrier (which I assume was the real nail in the coffin of Naked Kombat's live audience matches). And perhaps as homoerotic wrestling has become more established, there's less opportunity for the ragged spontaneity of a Wrestlefest, for example.

Brad Rochelle v Patrick Donovan - BGE Wrestlefest 2

But I'll keep a candle burning for the hope to someday buy my ticket for a ringside seat to watch the kink infused melodrama of homoerotic wrestling played out close enough for me to smell the sweat. Surely the seats would be packed for an opening bout with, say, my favorite homoerotic wrestler - non-pornboy division - Lon Dumont swagger out and climb commandingly through the ropes to work his bodybeautiful, indypro-informed magic on - how about - BGE veteran delight, Patrick Donovan. Patrick would be rewarded by those of us in the seats for copping some gratuitous feels of LD's gorgeous pecs, but LD would surely pound his amorous opponent into a sweaty, exhausted, defenseless pulp, earning even more awed adoration from us in the crowd. Match 2, I'm thinking, should be a little kinkier. Let's say Joshua Goodman (that's Mr. Joshua to you!), eager to show up LD, climbs into the ring next, against Grapple 101 emcee, Ashley Ryder. Ashley lets us in the seats know that if he conquers my top contender for the title of my favorite homoerotic wrestler - non-pornboy division - he'll give us all what we've been swooning for for more than a decade: an unobstructed view of Mr. Joshua's stripped cock and balls. Hell, the crowd would turn on Mr. J in a flash, wouldn't we!? Our blood would pump faster with each small advantage that Ashley managed to claim over Mr. J. When Ashley found himself bullied and slammed by his opponent, we'd roar in protest, desperate for our fresh-faced champion to deliver the goods he cockily promised. Knowing Ashley, sooner or later, boots would be stripped and the tension would rise over his fetish for claiming his opponent's socks. And, let's face it, Mr. J would likely capitalize on Ashley's single-minded devotion to his gimmick, beating the Britboy's face into the turnbuckle, tying him in the ropes and battering him with every appendage, before choking him out in the center of the ring as we catcalled, watching our hopes to see Mr. J's goods fade with Ashley's consciousness. But as full of himself as Mr. J is, he isn't immune to the adrenaline rush of the roaring crowd. We'd chant, "take it off, take it off, take if off," making the adonis pause as he's stepping through the ropes to make his exit. "Take if off, take it off, take it off," we'd chant like devotees of our druid god, weaving a spell so powerful that Mr. J, in his lust to be worshipped, couldn't refuse. He'd tease us. He'd start to strip, and then wag his finger at us, plucking our pumping heartstrings like a harpist. Take it off, take it off, take it off... we'd keep whispering, breathlessly, desperately, until his eyes closed in rapture at the sound of our worship, and as if with a mind of their own, his hands peeled his skin tight trunks down his long, muscled legs. He'd grab his balls in his right hand and his cock in his left, giving them a habitual tug, before lacing his fingers behind his head and flexing his eight-pack directly over top of Ashley's prone body, soaking in the impassioned shouts and grunts of our climactic adoration.

Dennis the Menace v Jay Austin - BGE - Paradise 2

Holy crap! I got completely lost there in my own fantasy of a BG live audience event, now didn't I? Surely there's got be at least another two or three more matches on the card, but I'll save the rest of that fantasy for another day. For now, let me just say again that I think there's an awesome chemistry to live audience wrestling, as evidenced by straight-up mainstream pro wrestling profits, that would only be that much more appealing in undisguised homoerotic fare. My candle is lit for a return of live audience action to gay wrestling, and me with my ticket to a front row seat.

2 comments:

I ruffled some big-ass feathers a few days ago when I responded to our esteemed Bard's provocative interview with Lon Dumont with a comment that indy wrestling experience alone is no guarantee of "quality" wrestling, let alone entertaining wrestling, when the arena is gay pro wrestling. I dashed off a cunty response to some of the comments, thought better of it, and asked Bard not to post it. Bard's current sheds some light on what I was trying to say, so I'll post here. I'm not the most concise commenter. However, what I lack in brevity I try to counter with depth. Feel free to disagree...

Playing to the Audience: Isn't that the core of pro wrestling? Our moderator reflects on the impact of a live audience, cheering for their favorites, booing the inevitable dastardly actions of the bad guy and, above all, the potentially glorious connection among wrestling kinksters sharing the collective thrill of witnessing a match deliberately designed to tease on a homoerotic level as well. He offers the provocative image of Joshua Goodman, with nearly ten years of teasing but never quite giving up the full monty, finally going all the way, beholden and emboldened by a captive audience rapturously chanting, "Take it off! Take it off!" It's an enticing fantasy--one that is the essence of pro wrestling (after all, what's wrestling, whether gay, straight, mixed, chick fights, erotic, athletic or explicit, if not a conscious exploration/exploitation of fantasy?). But, my suggestion is, the audience is always there, whether the match is live or sold on tape weeks, months years later.

When I said "indy" wrestling experience wasn't necessarily a guarantee of "good" wrestling and dared to suggest that a lot of those guys were jonny-come-latelies to an industry that has long been built on the participation of guys who weren't, it wasn't a crack against indy wrestlers: it was stating the obvious. Some of the most popular wrestlers in this industry had no prior experience with pro: Mr. J, Brad Rochelle, Troy Baker, Wade Cutler, Beau Hopkins, Paul Perris, Jimmy Royce, Mike Pope, Steve Sterling. Add to that the dozens and dozens of gay guys who were always turned on by some form of wrestling, at for decades that was generally the bulk of ALL gay wrestling videos. To this day, not only do new wrestlers from that "tradition" often outsell many of the most experienced workers, re-releases of many of those lions' matches, over a decade later, still do as well.

Not only do I think those guys consistently delivered awesome matches, I marvel that what they didn't isn't constantly, consciously repeated, extracted and expanded into even more intense versions of what they were. Steve Sterling and Mike Pope did a match over two decades ago in jockstraps in a ring that lasted nearly an hour. Where's the update of that? Where's the latest male model in an oil match, or the jobber hunk everyone else can't wait to abuse. Hell, where's the update on the posing strap era of AMG and Physique Pictorial decades before I was born that was the bulk of gay erotica?...

...I have nothing against indy wrestling. I love indy wrestling. I can tell anyone who the "hottest" worker on the indy circuit is at a given moment. I can tell you who the most provocative are in terms of quasi-kinky character (Sexxxy Eddie up in Canada, Sexy Peter White in Austria, Hard Gay over in Japan--tho he's momentarily retired). I can tell you who's most innovative or traditionalist or a throwback. I can even tell you who's a crazy-ass Christian Fundamentalist (for reals--not kayfabe) who works primarily on that peculiar "God is Cool! And he likes to watch men punch each other in the face!" circuit (Truitt Fields--such a waste of a hot body, that one. And what a strange God that is that enjoys sweaty, half-naked men beating the crap out of each other, so long as they pray before and after. Hmmm.... maybe I should go to that church)

My beef is when "Indy" wrestling is presented as if the experience it provides is inherently THE BEST wrestling experience. Yes, I was referencing BG East, with it's 5 "indy wrestler" Spotlights in a row. I was also referencing Can-Am for titles like "So You Want to Be a Pro Wrestler," which was premised on the idea that Rio Garza somehow wanted but couldn't break into the indy circuit and Cameron Matthews and Paul Hudson were there to "prove" he didn't have the goods (ignoring the irony that, if Garza wanted to wrestle indy, there isn't a fed who wouldn't take him based on his looks alone), as well as Thunder's Arena, NRW and even Rock Hard Wrestling for every time they've said, "So-and-so is a successful male model, but the other guy is a "real" wrestler." I can enjoy two guys burning up the ring in gear that would work on the indy circuit doing an uninterrupted, well photographed match replete with the most dazzling chain wrestling sequences ever caught on tape. But I don't think Joshua Goodman would be "better," if he dressed like some guy working his ass off in front of 10 people in a high-school gym on the weekend dreaming of making it to the WWE. I don't think Troy Baker would have been better if he paid some dork pro wrestling trainer to "teach" him how to wrestle. And I don't think there's been a single BGE (or Can-Am or NRW, Thunders, Rock Hard) wrestler of any level of experience who's a "better" worker than Brad Rochelle (Think I'm crazy? You find me another who in one match did a 40 minute submission-fest, dominated in the ring in the next, AND routinely got his butt squashed, while also doing over a dozen pre- and post-match vignettes to boot.). I accept that other people may think that, and I'd love chatting with a few folk now and then to explain why they're totally wrong. (does that merit an "LOL"? How about a winking semi-colon and end parenthesis? ;)

It comes back to playing to the audience. If people demonstrate they think someone is good by paying to see his matches more than others, he's good. I don't care if people buy his matches because he's got a body built, buffed and honed to a high-gloss shine. I don't care if people like a guy because he's got a huge freakin' package or a bubble butt he's eager to show off if the most ridiculously revealing G-string or banana hammock or absolutely nothing more than a thin sheen of baby oil. I don't care if a guy looks like he has absolutely no idea what he's doing but people like him because he whimpers and moans oh-so sweetly in his suffering while someone who does kicks the shit out of him. It's all good. And I hope/expect/demand that our wrestling promoters and providers acknowledge those facts when they're producing new videos.

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This is a blog devoted to contemplating in excruciating detail the world of homoerotic wrestling. It's about the kinks and the quirks that turn me on and inspire my imagination. This site is not for everyone. You'll know within moments of browsing if it's for you. If it is: enjoy, leave a comment, and let your imagination come out and play.

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